The Beginning
by L J Groundwater
Summary: Red gets the answers he seeks about his family. Liz wants to help him deal with them. Set in the future of the show, when many things have been revealed to Liz... none of which are revealed here. An idea that came from watching "Madeline Pratt." Please read and review.


Owning the Blacklist is not an option for me. Playing with the characters... so far it's still up for grabs. Angsty... friendshippy... SO needed as a release after "Madeline Pratt." Set some time in the future, after many things that we would not have yet seen will have happened.

* JSTB * JSTB * JSTB * JSTB *

FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Keen surveyed the chaotic scene outside the house, trying in the darkness that was broken by swirling blue and red police lights and piercing flashlights to find the man who had led them here. Spying Assistant Director Harold Cooper nearby talking to a police officer, she hurried over to him. "Where's Reddington?" she asked.

Cooper looked past the cars and across the street. "Over there," he said.

Liz nodded and started heading away. "Keen." She stopped and turned back to him. "Be careful." Her inquisitive look asked her question. "I know you have a special relationship, whatever it is. But when a man has believed something for two decades and it's pulled out from under him…"

She looked over at Raymond Reddington, standing still as stone under a streetlight, staring out into the distance, his breath puffing white out in front of him in the cold night. She felt her heart clench.

"I'll be fine, sir," she said now.

Liz crossed the street, fighting the urge to run, and came up behind the once-fugitive Reddington, the man who at one time Liz, and all her colleagues, scorned and condemned. But seeing him standing so seemingly apart from this eerie mix of light and sound, she couldn't for the life of her conjure up those feelings now. Even with what had happened inside this house. Even with the bloodshed. She realized that she should have been shocked by everything that had gone down. But she wasn't. She had handled it all. And that, she knew, was in no small part thanks to the man in front of her now.

Reddington's voice jolted her back into the present. "I wasn't always a monster, Lizzie." Liz frowned as her own one-time hurled accusations at Reddington were reflected back at her. They didn't seem to fit, not now. Not this Reddington. "I was—"

Red's voice broke and his head bowed. Liz's own eyes filled with tears.

When Red spoke again his voice was barely a whisper. "I was… I was _Daddy."_

The anguish in Reddington's voice left Liz breathless. She reached out a hand to touch his back, but stopped short of actually doing so.

"It was all I ever—"

Again, Red stopped speaking. Again, Liz felt an overpowering wave of grief emanating from him. So many years of hunting for answers, hoping for miracles… In all her worst nightmares she couldn't imagine what he was going through. But even now, trying not to express his feelings, trying not to share that pain… it made her more keenly aware of it than if he had broken down in tears in front of her.

She lowered her hand. "We'll find her," she offered, weakly.

Red raised his head. "No, we won't," he said, his voice sounding tired, and suddenly old. "I know that now. We won't… _ever…_"He shook his head. "All of that was taken away."

Liz ignored the tear she felt running down her cheek. "That's what this was all about, wasn't it," she said softly. "The coming back. The Blacklisters. You were trying to find your wife and daughter."

"It doesn't matter now," Red said, matter-of-factly.

Liz's lips parted in incredulity. "Of course it matters," she disagreed softly. The dozens of thoughts racing through her mind refused to put themselves in any kind of logical order; she could think of nothing else to say to him to back up her statement. But she knew it was true, and she knew he believed it as well.

"I lived for them," Red said eventually. It was simply a statement of fact, Liz knew. Not a mournful cry, not a plea for sympathy. Just a fact. Something that until now Liz realized she had never known. "I survived… for _them._ I always thought I'd—" Liz felt the deep cut of the small, self-mocking snort of a laugh he let out here—"come back and… we'd all start again. A ridiculous flight of fancy…"

Red's obvious heartbreak reverberated within her. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

"I'm fine."

If she hadn't been working with him for so long, Liz might have been fooled by the brightness of his voice. But she had, and she wasn't. It had taken what felt like decades of work with Red for her to really bring together a truly correct profile, and if there was just one single thing she was now certain of, it was this: that Raymond Reddington hid behind a guard, a barricade, _all_ the time. It took many forms: dangerous liaisons, fine suits, snide remarks, laughter in the face of horror. But it was always there. On very rare occasions, the barrier weakened, and whenever it did, Liz found herself touched by the softness beneath. But in keeping with what appeared to be Reddington's desire not to be discovered that way, she had always stayed silent.

Now, however, she found she couldn't abide by that wish. Still, unwilling to cause him more distress than he was clearly already suffering, she simply moved up beside him. She stood unmoving for a moment, glanced at him and saw him focused on something in his mind's eye, or perhaps nothing at all. She reflected on how his face, though forcibly stoic, seemed familiar with suffering, a longtime companion of sadness. It disturbed her, and she wondered how she had missed that part of him before. Turning away to join him in his observation of nothing in particular, without looking at him she extended her hand, and found his. Feeling no response but not being rebuffed, she squeezed, first gently and then a little harder. And when she loosened her grip she felt the smallest pressure back from him.

They stood there for awhile away from the noise of the crime scene behind them. Comfort being given, comfort being taken, no words needing to be spoken to make the exchange. Eventually, Liz asked, "What will you do now? Will you keep working on the Blacklist?"

Another pause, and then, "Harold may have other plans," Red answered in a low voice. "Now that he knows the story of my departure, he may not be interested any longer in treating my activities while I was away with any leniency."

"You made a deal," Liz reminded him, more strongly than she expected.

"Deals get broken."

"Do _you _want to keep going?" Liz asked gently.

Raymond didn't answer.

Liz warred with herself for a second, then decided to tell Reddington a truth she had been denying for a long time. "_I'm_ glad you came back." She shrugged. "Not that it's any consolation."

"It is," Red answered quietly.

"The FBI still needs you," she said. "I…_I_ still need you. There's a lot going on out there, and I've gotten used to you being there to rescue me."

"You don't need me to rescue you, Lizzie."

"Maybe not so much any more. But you rescued me, Red. You _did."_

Liz heard a tiny breath of a laugh as his head turned just slightly, as though to look at her. But he didn't, and she could see only part of his profile under his fedora. His face, even in the darkness, looked tired and drawn, his eyes suspiciously bright. He said nothing.

"Red," she said, turning fully toward him and dropping his hand. He turned his face to her. "You did. You rescued me. My whole world fell apart around me; you _warned_ me it would. And then you promised me you would always be there to protect me, and you _were._" Still, Reddington said nothing. One small step closer. _"Red,"_ she pressed. "Whatever happened… your wife and daughter would never have stopped believing in you. Your daughter had a _good father."_

At this, Reddington lowered his head and turned back away from her. He said nothing for a few seconds. Then she heard him say in a low voice, "A good father is there when his child needs him. She needed me more than twenty years ago. _Twenty years…"_ He shook his head. "In the beginning I did everything I could to find them and still remain alive… I hunted everywhere… tracked down anyone who might have been involved… would have burned down the world to find them… in some cases, I did. After several years, it was obvious that my enemies were stronger than I was and I lost hope. I was angry. Angry at the people who had taken them away, angry at God, angry at myself. I started living the life I had become entangled in to find them, and I got stronger; when you have nothing to lose you can live with the casual disregard that makes legends of people on the wrong side of the law. But every now and then I would remember. Every now and then…"

His head dipped and he stopped speaking. Liz looked over at him. Red's eyes were squeezed shut tightly in his anguish, his right fist bracing his forehead. She said nothing, feeling both honored and saddened to witness such an exposed Raymond Reddington. She could think of nothing to say or do that would comfort him now, such a failure at helping him, when he had done so much to help her, in spite of all her ignorant protests. _Tell me to go, Lizzie,_ she heard now. The way she had treated him then, completely unaware of who he was. She wished at that moment she could have taken it all back.

After a time his hand dropped, and he took a deep breath in and out through his mouth. "It doesn't matter," he said again. "Even if I could find them now, I wouldn't be her father. I wouldn't be her husband. I'd be the man who wasn't there. The man who left them in their hour of need."

"You did everything you could, Red. I know you; when you want something badly enough, you don't leave a single stone unturned."

A small, if slightly mocking, smile. "Is that what you say as my FBI profiler?"

"No," Liz answered. She reached out and once again took his hand. "It's what I say as your friend."

Red turned a quizzical, mildly surprised look on her. "Yes. Your _friend,"_ Liz repeated. "We all need them now and then, you know. Even _you._ You've tried to live without them for a long time, but you can't go on without them indefinitely." For the first time tonight, she saw a small, genuine smile curve up the ends of Red's lips. "You're really good at being a friend, Red… but except for Dembe, you kind of stink at letting someone be one to you."

Red faced her now. His head tilted ever so slightly, his smile reaching just a little higher, touching his eyes. His hand squeezed hers. "Lizzie—"

"You told me when Sam died that the best way to keep his memory alive was to talk about him," Liz reminded him. Red nodded. "Tell me stories, Red."

Red stared straight into Liz's eyes then, the smile fading slowly from his lips. Liz knew that he was appraising her, somehow, that he was gauging her, trying to figure out if he could trust her with this part of him. Or whether she would turn out like so many others who had betrayed him when he needed the most to be able to count on them. She had no idea what the criteria were, but right now she found herself—strangely, perhaps, based on her past expressed wishes that he would just stay out of her life—hoping that she met them. The way he was looking at her was as if he was trying to extract a promise from her, that they were coming to an agreement whose terms were unspoken, but which were non-negotiable. She looked back, trying to convey with her eyes that she agreed to it all. She would do anything to deserve his trust.

Reddington straightened his head, put his right hand on their clasped ones. "Lizzie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Liz burst into a dazzling smile. She knew the movie reference, and nodded once in acceptance. "Can I wear your hat?" she asked playfully.

Reddington smiled and let out a short laugh as their hands unentwined. "We're not that close yet." She laughed with him. "But I don't think it will take too long for that to become an option."

"Tell me stories, Red," she said again, gently.

Reddington nodded twice, a slow, deliberate move of resignation. "When I finally let go in my heart, I will."


End file.
